Tagungsort Grand Hotel Heiligendamm

is that they have set up an annex of the castle
and they market it for overnight stays. So you
can book your overnight stay in the castle and
in the morning when you open your window
you think perhaps you are a king, or a queen,
or whatever - who knows? They’ve got lots
of visitors; it’s not to attract more visitors. But
it is, in fact, a way of attracting money. They
have calculated that by setting up this initiative,
they are going to draw at least half a million
euros a year in revenue that will serve for the
maintenance and the upkeep and the opening
of new areas in the castle that so far are not
being used. And since the French government
is not exactly rolling on a bed of euros, this is
a way of creating new income.
The second example I’m going to give is the
Festival of Lights in Lyon. These are some
pictures taken in December. This festival was
a religious festival. For 12 years now it has
been turned into three-day all-night festivities
where the whole city comes alight and where
… what you see in the background is the opera
and what you see in the foreground is one
of the technological light creations. That is to
say that all over the city all the monuments, all
the buildings, all the important heritage sites
are used as a backdrop for technological innovative
projects. On some buildings you have
projections of stories. They had a little one
with Eskimos on one of the rail stations. On
another one you had roses that actually bloomed
against the background. This is a way of
highlighting the wealth of your heritage, of
inciting people to come and visit your city, of
getting people to talk about your city. But it’s
also something that brings in income because
in Lyon in the evening generally shops close
around 7 at night. During the festival they are
open practically all night for three days. Four
million visitors in 3 days is an example worth
thinking about.
And last but not least is something that I attended
a few days ago: a European lab for
festivals. The idea is that when I speak about
crossing borders, it means that what you devise,
what you imagine, what you create – you
can either make sure that you take it outside,
that you produce it elsewhere. But you can
also bring in other people at the same time
who will contribute to your renown. You will
then make sure that you are engaged in creativity.
The European lab for festivals is only in
its third edition. But it is a way of encouraging
young artists, of encouraging producers to go
beyond their local status to a European status.
Now there once again it brings you the idea
that your heritage, your traditions, your knowhow,
your knowledge – you have to be able
to take them outside of the tourist context,
not think ‘alright, this is what’s going to make
people come to us.’ But ‘this is what is going
to make our destination come alive.’ Therefore
your buildings will take on their whole dimension;
your architecture will come alive through
the activities.
To conclude I would like to say that my aim today
was to show heritage must move. I heard
your government representative speak about
staging heritage. I think that staging heritage,
I’m sorry to say this, is more about celebrating
the past in the form of an epitaph. You don’t
simply stage heritage. You make it come alive.
To make it come alive you have to use your
existing heritage to produce new heritage. In
other words, you celebrate the present in view
of building futures and therefore give your destination
a new lease on life. The second point
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